Miranda Lambert is Nursing Her Heartache With Lake Street Dive Songs

November 6, 2015

Brooklyn’s own Lake Street Dive have been touring at a dizzying rate behind 2014’s stellar Bad Self Portraits, and they performed for a sold-out crowd at SummerStage shortly before the outdoor concert series’ thirtieth season came to an end on September 2. They’re going to play a number of small rooms up the East Coast next week for their Memory Lane Tour, which has Rachael Price, Bridget Kearney, Mike Calabrese and Mike “McDuck” Olson belting out “Stop Your Crying,” their jazzy rendition of Hall & Oates’ “Rich Girl” and the rest of their pop-embossed repertoire in the venues they played back before Price was singing the National Anthem on House of Cards and David Letterman was falling all over himself in the wake of their set. (The NYC dates for this intimate nostalgia bender bring them to the Rockwood Music Hall on November 11 and 12. The shows sold out within minutes.)

They’re now signed to a major — Nonesuch will be putting out their next full-length in early 2016 — and will likely be lapping the festival circuit in the months following its release, same as they’ve done for the past few years. Gone are the days of casual stoop conversations with neighbors in Ditmas Park. Lake Street Dive have arrived — and now they’re serving up the post-break-up soundtrack for famous people, too.

Last night, Miranda Lambert, one of country’s most compelling, sassiest and damn-straight-indestructible voices, posted a screengrab of her phone, which was in the midst of blasting “Better Than,” the heart-wrenching emotional autopsy from Bad Self Portraits. Lambert’s been dealing with relationship drama of her own: Her very public marriage to Blake Shelton — fellow country heavyweight/real-life bargain bin version of Oklahoma!‘s Curly — ended in a very public divorce back in July. Shelton has been a judge on NBC’s The Voice since the first season of the show, and the gossip fires were fueled earlier this week when reps for both Shelton and fellow judge Gwen Stefani, whose marriage to Gavin Rossdale came to an end earlier this year as well, confirmed their relationship status. Given the high-profile nature of the recent developments in the Lambert/Shelton’s saga, “Better Than” seems to fit the bill as a suitable song to keep in heavy rotation:

I could spend ages reading the news
I could spend days singing the blues
But I turn up the TV light
Give up without a fight
Better than pretending to know what’s wrong and what’s right

Sometimes the stanzas hit too close to home — and sometimes they just hit the nail on the head. Stars: They’re [Lake Street Dive fans with broken hearts] just like us.